


Save Yourself, I'll Hold Them Back

by IcamaneHatake



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Killjoys, Battery City, California, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, Desert, F/M, M/M, Multi, Pre-Killjoy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-14
Updated: 2013-07-22
Packaged: 2017-12-20 03:44:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/882561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IcamaneHatake/pseuds/IcamaneHatake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>California, 2018<br/>They know too much. After witnessing Draculoids violently murdering a man, Gerard and his friends find themselves being hunted by Korse, agent of BL and the SCARECROW. <br/>Out here in the desert, anything could happen. <br/>Out here in the desert, their fates are sealed.<br/>And out here in the desert, your shadow might just live on without you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Battery City

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been quite a long time in the making. It's my first attempt at telling a story in the present tense, so if there are any continuity issues, please let me know! I've tried to fix everything, but sometimes my brain just doesn't want to catch errors. 
> 
> There are a lot of fics about the Killjoys, but this is my interpretation of how they became outlaws. 
> 
> Enjoy

Ray’s van is familiarity. It’s where even in the worst times, or when they’ve all been apart for a long time, they can feel like a family again. A totally-adopted, half-of-us-are-dating-each-other, love-hate, rivalry, fight-to-the-death-for-you family. Only the Ways and the Bryars are actually related to each other, but Frank and Ray are so close to them that they practically count. 

They always sit the same way – Ray or Bob drive, usually Ray, occasionally holding hands over the shift stick. They’re like the parents of the group, even if they aren’t quite the oldest. 

In the middle is usually Frank and Mikey, because Mikey’s tall and requires as much leg room as he can get and Frank likes to stretch out and cuddle and is, in general, a needy fucker, but in a cute way. 

Before, Gerard sat with them too, but since Bob started bringing his kid sister Anette around, he’s sat in the back with her. It’s cramped and close (which is why sometimes Frank’s forced back there), but that was okay with Gerard because that means he’s close and cramped with her. She’s fresh out of college and pretty much the same age as Frank and Mikey. And Bob is just as protective over her as Gerard is over Mikey. Gerard knows first-hand—he’s seen Bob punch a drunk guy in the face who was harassing Anette. Bob cracked the guy’s nose and given him a deep black eye. 

But she’s pretty and she smiled at Gerard and his heart had flown into his throat and that was that. So they sit in the back together so that hopefully, no one can see them holding hands and grabbing knees. 

It’s a Friday night, and the group is on their way back from a club. Gerard, Ray and Frank are wasted, Anette and Mikey slightly buzzed, and Bob is just laughing at them all. But Bob hasn’t ever been in this part of Battery City, and with no one to give him directions, he’s gotten them effectively lost.

“Shit guys, I think I took a wrong turn back… well, a lot of wrong turns,” Bob says, stopping the van in an alley to consult his phone for a map. This part of town is not the friendliest—the brick buildings are crumbling and that looks like a crack addict over at the end of the alley. So they need to get the fuck out of here and home as fast as possible. 

Frank giggles, hugging Mikey tighter. “Bob, you’re so _silly_ , we’re not lost! Just keep driving.”

“Shut up Frank, you can’t even give directions sober,” Bob says blankly, typing in his home address into the map. 

“Just get the fuck out of downtown and we’ll be fine,” Mikey says sleepily. “And hurry, I have to piss.”

“Wait… Bob, what’s that?” Anette asks from the back, pointing out the windshield. She’s frowning as she attempts to crawl over the seats and into the middle of the van, her blonde hair swinging around her. “There, behind that dumpster?”

Gerard is too busy admiring Anette’s ass—which is practically in his face, thanks—to look at what she’s talking about, but Bob says dismissively, “It’s just a dog, Anette.”

Then there’s a bang, like a slamming noise, and they all look up to the dumpster behind the building just a few feet in front of them. They see a dark figure crumple against the dumpster, and then from the back door of the building walk two figures clad in white and creepy masks. 

“Draculoids,” Mikey says softly, trying to keep his voice steady, but everyone can hear the tension in it. 

Bob starts to lower his phone into the consul so he can drive, but he’s not fast enough. The black figure is saying something, begging from the looks of it, but the Draculoid on the left pulls out a lazar gun and shoots him, the barrel of the gun on the figure’s forehead. There’s a burst of light and the head explodes. Anette lets out a small scream and Gerard catches her before she can fall down onto Frank’s head, but he can’t take his eyes off the gore—mangled flesh and skull fragments, pink brain and red blood, all dribbling out of this guy’s not-head. At least, Gerard assumes it was a guy. There’s not much to go on now.

This is when Bob throws the van into drive and peels out down the alley. The Draculoids look up sharply and start chasing the van with their guns raised, but they never use them. They stop when Bob takes a sharp-ass turn that sends Anette tumbling into Gerard’s lap (Which Gerard is totally okay with). They stand there just staring after the van, and just before Bob makes another turn, one of them pulls out some kind of phone and starts talking into it.

-

“Ray, you’re staying with us tonight.”

It’s after midnight and Bob is turning down the street to his and Anette’s house. They dropped off Gerard, Mikey and Frank with a promise to call in the morning if anything was weird. 

“Bob, seriously—”

“No. You’re not staying in that shitty apartment alone tonight,” Bob says firmly, parking the car outside the house. “I’ll tie you to my dresser if I have to.”

“You could at least be courteous and tie me to the bed,” Ray teases with a drunken smile. Bob rolls his eyes and gets out to follow Anette, who’s already halfway up the sidewalk and pulling her key out.

The house is tiny, but Bob has to admit that ever since Anette came to live with him, it’s much, much cleaner and looks quite a bit nicer. She’s got shit organized and most of the furniture matches now and he even gave in and let her paint the living room. The kitchen never running out of food was another perk, mostly because before, Bob had a really hard time of remembering to buy it.

Ray falls over in Bob’s bed and is out before Bob can even finish brushing his teeth. Bob smiles a little at Ray—he does funny things with his lips in his sleep, and sometimes he twitches a lot, but Bob is okay with it. He grabs a book and walks out to the living room. He isn’t tired at all. In fact, he wants nothing more than to get that terrible mental image out of his mind’s eye before he goes to sleep, otherwise he’s going to have fucked up dreams.

It’s maybe an hour after Bob started reading when Anette walks in, her hair messy and what is left of her makeup streaked down her cheeks. 

“Bob, what’s going to happen to us?”

He shuts the book and lets her sit down next to him on the couch, setting her head on his shoulder. “What do you mean?”

“I just keep thinking… what if they come after us? The… Draculoids?” she asks, biting her lip slightly. 

“Why would they?”

“We’re witnesses to their crime. If it was a crime.”

‘ _She does have a point,_ ’ Bob admits to himself. 

“Well… look. Everything will be fine. I promise. I’ll look after you just like always, and even _if_ we get some Draculoid knocking on the door, he won’t know what hit him. Right?”

Anette frowns, but she nods anyways. “Right. I guess.”

They stay like that for the rest of the night though, Bob sleeping with his head on the couch arm and a protective arm around Anette’s shoulders, her cheek pressing into his chest. 

-

It’s four-thirty in the morning when the three of them are all awake. Ray wakes from a nightmare; Bob, from the inability to stay asleep; Anette, when Bob gives up, can’t sleep either. So at five, they decide to go for a drive, because Bob and Ray want to get out of the house, Anette doesn’t want to stay there alone, and Ray needs to get a change of clothes from his apartment anyways. 

It’s lonely and quiet on the roads, and even though the radio is playing at minimum volume, it seems like a sin to interrupt the morning hours. Bob is tapping his fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of the song, Ray is watching the buildings pass by, and Anette is fighting sleep and losing. It only takes fifteen minutes to park at the apartment complex instead of the usual half-hour it takes with traffic. Ray runs up to his apartment, promising that he’ll be quick. Bob snorts, but doesn’t say anything else before Ray’s gone.

It’s only about a minute later that Bob’s phone rings. The sound jolts Anette out of her doze and she listens carefully to Bob’s end of the conversation. “Yeah?” There’s a long pause, and Anette watches Bob’s face carefully though the rear-view mirror. She can’t make out what the person on the other end is saying, but their tone is rather frantic, and Bob’s frown gets deeper and deeper until his eyebrows are in danger of touching. “Alright, Frank, just—Frank! Just calm down, we’ll be there in a sec,” Bob says a bit roughly, but it’s still in his cool-Bob way. Then he says, “Trust me, we’ll be there just as soon as Ray changes. Bye,” and hangs up the phone. 

“Bob, what’s going on?” Anette asks carefully, and Bob runs his hands through his short blonde beard. Something’s terribly wrong. 

-

As usual, Gerard doesn’t get any sleep that night. Granted, it’s partially on him this time because he didn’t want to take his pills. He didn’t want to sleep and have nightmares about dead people, thanks very much. So he stays up all night, curled on his couch with a sketchbook and pencils while Mikey and Frank sleep fitfully in the room across the hall. Gerard tries to think about the _rest_ of the night (like, the part before Bob got them lost in downtown), and he succeeds a little. He gets caught up thinking about how he and Anette had slipped off into the crowd at the club and danced together, taking advantage of being around strangers to grind her like no tomorrow, because if Bob had seen him doing that… well, Gerard _hopes_ that Bob would have been cool about it, but he knows how being defensive over your little sibling goes. 

But then Gerard gets trapped into thinking about the Draculoids and that unknown figure that had the misfortune of getting his brains blown out. Then Gerard’s drawing, drawing the gore that comes to mind, and it’s possibly helping him figure out his feelings, but not enough to where he’s going to feel comfortable taking sleeping pills. 

He’s like that until about four, scrunched on the sagging couch and drawing, getting graphite all over the outside part of his right hand. His legs are starting to cramp up, but he can’t sit any other way or else it’ll be all wrong for how he’s been working on this zombie. He doesn’t know exactly _why_ it’s a zombie—maybe because of the whole “brains falling out” bit—but it’s a zombie anyways, and fighting back, and he could have gone on with a whole philosophical statement about it, is even thinking one up, when he hears the slam of a car door outside the house. 

Gerard freezes up, his senses kicking into overdrive. He’s not sure what exactly is going on, so he creeps into Mikey’s room, finds the spare lazar gun they stole off a Draculoid almost a year ago, and goes back to the living room. He contemplates shutting off the light, but that would give away that he was awake. But maybe it’s Bob or Anette or Ray... no, they would have called first and warned him that they were coming over. So he settles for the worst—they’ve sent the Draculoids after them. 

He takes cover in the closet right next to the front door, keeping it open just a sliver so that he can see out of it. He holds the gun tightly to him, his finger just barely on the trigger. He can feel it humming pleasantly in his hands, as if to sing sweetly, “Use me, kill them all!” He wishes that it wasn’t so snuggly warm in his hand, like it fit there. Gerard kind of really hates violence, but when they threaten his friends, his _family_ … shit’s gonna go down. 

They don’t even knock on the door, but they do try to kick it in first. It fails, thanks to Gerard’s paranoia and getting a super-strong lock for the front and back doors. Not even Mikey can pick those locks. But then there’s a zapping sound, and Gerard knows that they’ve melted the lock and takes a deep breath, preparing himself for the possible storm. Then they kick again and three Draculoids cross over the fallen door. Their masks are even uglier up close, and Gerard has a fleeting thought that they would make good villains for a comic book, and then questions fleetingly why they wear masks and are called _Draculoids_ before he sees one reaching for his hiding place and he points and shoots just like he had seen in the movies.

The effect can’t have been more surprising. Instead of firing a lazar, like he _thinks_ is going to happen, whateverthefuckitwasthatcameoutofthegun goes clean through the closet door and into the Draculoid’s eye, and it’s another second before there are brains and skull fragments and bits of rubber mask all over the goddamn hallway. It takes Gerard a second to recover, but the other Draculoids look at their fallen comrade, confused. Then Gerard bursts out of the closet, gun blazing, and the other two Draculoids go down, though luckily without more flying brains. 

“Wha- _what the fuck?_ ”

Gerard just then notices how much noise he has probably been making when Mikey stands in the doorway, squinting at the scene of gore, gripping the doorframe.

“Gee, what the fuck happened?” 

“I wasn’t about to let the fucking Draculoids in,” Gerard said, kicking one out of the way so he can reach his brother. “It’s okay now though, except our door is fucked.”

Mikey’s face is still pretty calm, but his skinny arms are shaking just slightly. “Can we… can we get rid of them?”

“Let’s,” Gerard says, and they start dragging the bodies out the front door before the shock can really set in of what he did. 

-

Frank wakes up to a cold bed at five AM.

He wriggles around with his eyes closed for a few moments, trying to feel Mikey next to him. But all his hand meets are cold sheets, and Frank groans, longing for Mikey’s arms around him again. So he unwillingly opens his eyes and rolls over. 

The first thing Frank really notices (after how cold it is, of course) is the smell. It smells like something is dead, and Frank panics. All he can think as he scrambles out of bed to the hallway is, ‘ _Fuck, fuck, fuck, where’s Mikey, fuck, if he or Gerard are dead—_ ’

The blood and kicked in door in the front hall sends Frank’s heart beating so fast that he isn’t even cold anymore. “Mikey?” he calls out feebly, shaking so badly that he has to brace himself against the wall. “Gee?”

There’s a shuffle from outside and Frank nearly screams, but it’s just Mikey and Gerard, and they’ve got blood on their clothes. 

“Frankie, it’s alright,” Mikey assures him, but it doesn’t do anything to quell Frank’s shaking. 

“Wha… blood?” is all Frank can manage to say before Mikey comes to support him with an arm around his waist. 

“Draculoids tried to break in,” Gerard explains, and he’s paler and more uptight than usual. “I didn’t have any choice.”

“Frankie,” Mikey says softly, kissing Frank’s hair, “I need you to call Bob. Tell them to get over here now, because I don’t think they’re safe at the house. Gee and I need to figure out what to do about the door.”

“Al… alright,” Frank agrees, and after another kiss, he goes to find his cellphone. 

-

It doesn’t take long, once Ray is back in the van, to drive to the Way house. Bob speeds the whole way, gripping the wheel so tight he thinks he could probably break it off. They don’t talk, the radio has been turned off, and it’s the most strained silence yet. 

“So… they tried to break in to Gee’s house?” Ray asks hesitantly.

“They _did_ break in,” Bob clarified, taking a turn. “According to Frank, they broke down the door.”

“Shit,” Ray breathes, and then they’re quiet again. 

Anette doesn’t know what to say, really. She also doesn’t know what to expect when they roll up to Gerard’s house, but it certainly isn’t the three body shapes covered in a tarp outside in the front lawn, all in a row. She shivers as they get out, and the three of them walk side-by-side up the sidewalk, Bob with his arm around Anette’s shoulders, and Ray next to Bob, close enough that their fingers brush. The front door is indeed missing, and they all squeeze in. 

“Gee? Mikey, Frank! It’s us,” Bob calls out, squeezing Anette’s shoulders when she starts to shake from the sight of blood staining the floor. 

“We’re in the kitchen,” Mikey calls back, and they follow his voice. 

Frank is sitting at the table, staring at a cup of coffee, his hands twitching. Mikey and Gerard are blank-faced and pale, and Mikey says, “Go ahead and drink something, we’re going to fix the door.” (They end up shoving the door back in the frame and blocking it with the couch, which was good enough for right then.) 

So Bob and Anette sit down, and Ray makes the three of them coffee. Anette sets a hand on Frank’s and gives it a gentle squeeze. “Frankie, drink some coffee.”

“I don’t want to drop the mug,” he mutters, not taking his eyes off the surface of the dark liquid. 

“It’ll be fine, Frank. We’ll… we’ll figure this out.” Anette sounds so sure, even though her voice is shaking too, but only Bob can hear the quaver. “Together.”

When Mikey and Gerard come back, Gerard collapses into the chair across from Anette, burying his head in his hands. Mikey stands there, gripping the table, too deep in thought to really say anything. 

It’s Bob that breaks the silence. “I’m not the only one thinking it.” Everyone looks up at him, with varying degrees of exhaustion in their eyes. “We have to leave. We’re not safe in the city anymore.”

“Yeah, and where are we going to go?” Mikey asks, probably not meaning to sound pissy but doing so anyways.

“Anywhere, just away from here,” Bob answers calmly. He knows that they’re all on edge, and not to take the tones of their voices too seriously. “And we have to do it now.”

“Now?” This time it’s Gerard, but his voice is cracking when he says it. 

“Yes. We need to clear out, and make sure we can’t be tracked. We’ll just… live out of the van or something until we can find somewhere where the Draculoids can’t get to us, or anyone else for that matter.”

They’re silent while they think about what Bob has said, and it really sinks in that he’s completely right. “Just tell us what we need to do,” Ray says. His voice is reasonably steady, like he’s the first one to really get over the shock.

“Alright, well… we need money and food, obviously. Enough to get us through at least a few days. Cash only.”

“I’ll go clean out my bank account,” Frank says, coming out of his trance. “I can get food.” 

“And I’ll go with you,” Ray says, smiling slightly. “I’ll make sure you buy more than junk food.”

“Fuck you, man,” Frank says playfully, trying to punch Ray’s arm but failing pitifully.

“Okay, so you guys take the van, and get gas, too. Anette, you and I need to go back to the house and get what we can from there. And Mikey and Gee—”

“We’ll scavenge around here,” Mikey finishes. “And we’ll see if we can find another lazar gun or two, just in case.”

“Right, so… break?”

“Break,” everyone agrees. 

-

Bob takes Anette on Mikey’s motorcycle back to their house to pack some bags and get all the cash they can. Anette presses her cheek into Bob’s back, squeezing him tight around the ribcage. It doesn’t take them long to get back to their house.

“ _Fuck,_ ” is the first thing out of Bob’s lips. 

The front door is hanging on one hinge, the windows smashed in. They can see other signs of destruction in the hallway, and mud tracked in over the threshold. As if drawn to it, Anette starts for the door, and Bob grabs her arm to stop her. “No,” he hisses. “What if there’s a Draculoid in there?”

“Wouldn’t they have already come out and shot us?” Anette asks, trying to wrench away from him, but his grip his firm and he’s about four times stronger. 

“I’m not letting you risk it!” he all but snarls, but Anette’s broken away and he has to chase after her up into the house. 

The house is in even worse shape on the inside. Furniture is turned on end, slashed, holes have been punched in the walls, burns on everything, shattered glass scattered all over the floor. Bob checks all the rooms he passes to make sure there aren’t any unwanted persons in the house. He can hear Anette in her bedroom, and pushes open the door to see her wrecked bed, light blue walls singed, and clothing scattered. She’s holding a small silver locket in her hand, the one that was their mother’s before she died, and Bob can tell that Anette is trying really hard not to cry. 

“Why?” she asks him. Her fingers are white from where the locket chain is being gripped, and shaking violently. 

Bob sets a hand on her shoulder, and says, “Pack quick. We need to leave as soon as possible.”

She just nods and follows his directions in a few moments. She throws together her ratty jeans, some tank-tops, a coat, and the locket into an old backpack and leaves, not looking back to her ripped bed and strewn clothing. 

Bob is standing in the hallway, holding a sack of his own. He’s redressed in his boots, old jeans, a band shirt and the blazer he had acquired from a thrift store so many years ago. They silently leave and take the bike back to the Way house.

-

“Well, this is it.”

Anette is organizing the large stack of non-perishable food on the table; Frank sits at the end, counting the money; Bob is checking over the spare lazar gun Ray found at his apartment; Ray walks in the door, coming back from checking over the van one last time; Mikey has finished deactivating their phones and moves on to cutting up credit cards. It’s Gerard who finishes packing everything, and when he speaks, everyone looks up at him except Frank. 

“We need to leave soon. Best time is rush hour.”

“I beg to differ,” Ray mutters, but everyone is pretty sure he’s joking.

“It’ll be harder for them to pick us out, or even to get us.”

“Done,” Mikey says, setting down the knife and the remains of his card. “We’re as off-the-grid as possible.”

“And we’ve got enough food for a while if we can cook it,” Anette chimes in. 

“Six thousand, three hundred and… seventy two dollars,” Franks says, setting down the last two dollars. “That had better be enough.”

“Do we have any idea where we’re going?” Ray asks. 

“We can’t get out of the state,” Gerard answers. “Boarder patrol is too tight.” He pulls out a map and spreads it on the small empty space on the table. It shows all the roads, rivers, cities, and more importantly, the desert and boarder of the area. “I think we should just drive to the desert.”

“Are you crazy?” Bob asks, shaking his head.

“No. There are lots of abandoned towns out there, we could stake some out and then pick one to stay in.”

“Sounds thrilling,” Mikey comments sarcastically.

“With any luck, it won’t be permanent.”

“We should go if we’re going to leave.” Anette has finished sorting and looks at all of them in turn. Everyone is sleep deprived, and none more than Gerard, but through the tiredness is a sense of not only panic but determination. They weren’t going to go down without a fight. 

“Anette’s right. Let’s get packed. I’ll drive,” Ray says, and they scramble to get the van packed.


	2. The Van

Ray and Bob take the front, Ray driving. They have sunglasses on and are both tapping their fingers along to the music while the van crawls along in the traffic. They had taken the long way out of Battery City and while that was probably safer, it was taking far, far longer. They’re quietly playing this game they invented where they would have to guess the tempo and key signature of the song they were listening to. There was no way of really knowing if they were right and no reward for winning, just something nerdy they could do together to keep each other awake. 

Frank and Mikey hung up spare shirts in the second row to keep the sun kind of out of their eyes, and they had drifted into an uneasy sleep. Mikey’s glasses are askew, one of Frank’s hands dangerously close to giving him a smack in the face, his knees shoving into the back of Bob’s seat. Frank himself is frowning and making little noises in his sleep, twisting every now and then from next to Mikey. He’s probably having a nightmare, but when Mikey wakes up just long enough to put a comforting arm around his waist, Frank’s mumbling ceases for the moment. 

In the very back, squished in with the food and extra clothes, Gerard is sitting rather still. He’s staring out the windshield and blocking the sun from Anette, who is sleeping fitfully with her head in his lap. He strokes her hair absent-mindedly. It’s soft but slightly oily between his fingers. He wonders what she’s dreaming about, if she’s dreaming at all, and he has despairing thoughts about how this is all wrong and that she deserves more than this. She deserves more that being hauled around with them. She could actually have a future. Granted, he could only hope that that future could include him, but she could have accomplished something, actually bought her freedom from the state and lived outside of this desert wasteland. If they just hadn’t gone out last night…

-

“Frankie, come on. Quick break.”

“Mmm?”

Frank stirs at the sound of Mikey’s voice, and he slowly opens his eyes and rubs them. He has no idea how long he’s been asleep. He reaches up and fixes Mikey’s glasses. 

Mikey smiles at him. “Thanks. Now, come on, you need to get awake so we can have the next driving shift.”

“Where are we?” Frank asks as he and Mikey scramble out of the van and follow Bob, Anette, and Gerard into the gas station.

“Just outside the city. It’s about noon.”

“Three hours.” Frank yawns wildly. “That’s not that bad.”

“Bob and Ray are both exhausted, so I’m going to drive next.”

“And I’ll keep you awake.”

“Something like that.”

They relieve themselves and walk around a bit while Bob and Anette buy water for everyone and Gerard goes out behind the station for a smoke. Frank joins him shortly, pulling out a slightly squished cigarette and borrowing Gerard’s lighter. 

“Did you sleep?” Frank asks, but he doesn’t really need to because he knows the answer.

“No. Can’t.” Gerard leans against the stone building and lets smoke drift lazily out of his mouth. “It’s okay though, I don’t want to.”

“Did you see anything suspicious? Anyone following us or anything?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean they don’t already know we’ve left. And once they know that…”

“They’ll send out the forces,” Frank supplied.

“In mass.”

They’re silent for a few moments while they smoke. It’s a terrible habit to kick, but at times of high stress, it’s calming and comforting. A little bit of home, of the old days, when things weren’t so bad. 

“Do you think—” Frank stops, unsure of himself. “Do you think that they’ll send out… Korse?”

Gerard stops, drops the butt of his cigarette, and puts it out with his boot heel. “Maybe. I dunno.

“Because if they do—”

“We’ll be fine, Frank.”

“But if they do—”

“Don’t worry about it. It’ll just make your imagination your worst enemy.”

Frank puts out his cigarette, too. “I… I guess you’re right, Gee.”

Gerard offers him a half-smile. “We’d better get back. I want that middle seat this time.”

-

Once they’re out of the city, it’s nothing but desert, sun, wind, and the blacktop. And it is _hot_. The AC is pumping, but it’s helping only a little, and they’ve stripped off their jackets and hung them around the windows to block the sun and Frank has even pulled off his shirt and kept driving, trying to ignore how sweaty his hands are. It’s five in the evening, and he and Mikey both have sunglasses on, but it’s still hard to see through the blinding sunset off to their right. 

“Gee, pass me up some food, I’m starving,” Mikey says, turning to look back at Gerard. 

“Alright, give me a sec,” Gerard mutters back, and he crawls enough over the seat that he can reach a bag of food without bumping Ray or Bob. “Do you want some graham crackers or… what the fuck is this… I think this is canned pasta.”

“Give me the pasta.”

“Crackers for me,” Frank adds, and Gerard grabs two packs of those. He hands up one of them and the pasta before digging in to his own package of crackers. He rips it open and chews a cracker greedily, finally realizing how starved he is. Funny. He isn’t tired, though he hasn’t slept in over twenty-four hours, but he’s hungry like nobody’s business. 

“Anyone think that we should stop soon to cook?” Gerard asks, kind of hoping that someone will say yes and they can get out of the van for longer than a few minutes. 

“Maybe when it gets a little darker,” Mikey says, trying to open the can with his knife. “Fucking bastard, just get in there…”

Gerard glances over to Anette, who has pulled back her white-blonde hair and is leaning against the window, lost in her own thoughts, her skin glistening with tiny droplets of sweat. “You want one?” he asks, offering her a cracker. 

She glances at it and shakes her head sadly. “No. I’m not hungry, thanks.”

“Come on Anette, you should eat.”

“I’m not hungry, Gee.” 

“Anette, you haven’t eaten in ages.”

“I’m _fine,_ ” she says sharply, slapping his hand and the cracker away from herself. Accepting defeat, Gerard puts the cracker down and reaches over. He takes her hand and strokes the back of it with his thumb. She sighs and says, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright.”

“I’m just…”

“On edge?”

“Yes. But I really can’t eat.”

Gerard snorts.

“Besides, before I eat, you’re going to sleep.”

“I can’t sleep, you know that.”

“You look like you’re going to keel over dead.”

Gerard opens his mouth to argue, but Frank cuts him off. “The lady’s right, Gee. You should sleep.”

“Got you, you bastard,” Mikey swears with grim satisfaction as he finally gets the can open and starts eating the cold pasta. 

Gerard sighs. There’s no way to win with these people. “Alright, fine, I’ll… I’ll go to sleep after the next stop. We’re close, aren’t we Frank?”

“I think we can make it to about seven or eight, depending on where the next town is.”

Gerard groans. He doesn’t know if he can tolerate their nagging for that much longer.

-

By eight, they’re freezing again. When they stop, they’ve pulled their clothes back on and stumble stiffly out of the van. Bob and Ray are sleepy still, Mikey goes off to try and find a trash can for his empty tin of pasta, and Frank, Gerard and Anette attempt to get warm and find some water and sandwiches all at the same time. 

“Fuck this desert,” Gerard mutters, wrapping his arms tighter around himself. “So fucking bi-polar.”

“Is ham okay?” Anette asks, holding up a sandwich.

“It’s not like there’s much choice,” Frank says, looking at the small sandwich section. “It’s that or salami, and that shit is just… no.”

“Alright.” Anette laughs slightly and starts picking up sandwiches. 

Shortly, Gerard comes up behind her, his lips brushing her ear. “Anette, ditch the sandwiches. We have to go now.”

“What?” she asks, panic rising.

“Korse.”

She tenses at the name. She glances up to the left where a mirror has been placed, and she can see a bald man entering the gas station. He’s wearing white and frowning, looking around for something. And that something could only be them. 

“There are two Draculoids outside, but we don’t think they’ve seen the van yet.”

“Where are Mikey and Frank?”

“I think they made it back to the van. Ray’s there too.”

“And Bob?”

Gerard swallows, his eyes darting up to the mirror. “I don’t know.”

Trembling, Anette puts the sandwiches back and they start working their way around the shop. They try and keep distance between themselves and Korse while making for the door. They get trapped behind the first row next to the door, and when Korse rounds the corner, they sprint out. He chases them, pulling a lazar gun from inside his coat. Anette turns her head to look, but Gerard grabs her arm and drags her on towards the van.

“Anette! Gee!”

Bob is running towards them, lazar gun pulled. A Draculoid is chasing him, fumbling with its gun. Bob turns and shoots it before making it to his sister and Gerard. “Get in the van!”

Gerard yanks the side door open and throws himself in just as the second Draculoid and Korse reach them. “Let’s go!” Mikey yells from the driver’s seat as Bob starts shooting again. Anette is about to get in next to him when Korse aims for her. 

“ _No!_ ” 

Bob lets loose more fire and hits the container for natural gas next to the building. The force from the explosion sends him backwards into the car; Korse and the Draculoid, to the pavement. But just as Bob is pushing himself into the seat, Korse raises his gun once more and shoots Bob in the arm that’s trying to close the van door. Bob yells out, clutching his arm while Ray puts the van in drive. The squealing of tires is drowned out by a second explosion, and Gerard leans over Bob to slam the door shut. The last thing he sees is Korses’ eyes, burning in the firelight.


	3. The House

“Fuck, this burns,” Bob hisses, allowing Anette to support him while they hobble towards an abandoned house. His hand is pressed over the burning wound. It’s spread to just larger than the palm of his hand and is a sickly charred black and red. Gerard had almost passed out at the sight of it and is now having his elbow held by Mikey because he’s stumbling from queasiness and exhaustion. 

“We’ll ice it, that should stop the burning,” Anette assures him, even though she has no idea if it will work or not. “Come on, in you get.”

They stagger into the house and the kitchen. Everything is coated in a thick layer of dust. Anette sets Bob down in a creaky chair and looks about the kitchen. The one window is letting in a considerable amount of moonlight. Along that wall is a counter with a sink that, upon inspection, doesn’t give water. In the corner is a fridge that isn’t plugged in and is empty. Anette sighs. Where the hell is she going to get some ice from?

She hears Frank, Mikey and Gerard all stumble into the house and go to explore it. A few moments later, Ray walks in the door from parking the van. 

“Anette, I think there’s an ice box out by where I parked. I’ll take care of Bob if you want to check it out,” he says. Anette nods and goes back outside.

There’s a slight breeze, but it feels good after the day of heat. The moon is bathing everything in a light that would have been beautiful any other night. But Anette can’t see that beauty tonight. She’s too full of worry and exhaustion to care. 

She follows the tire tracks around the house to where the van has been skillfully hidden from the road. With luck, they can hide out here for a few hours without being discovered by Korse or the Draculoids. Anette starts poking around, looking for the ice box. She hopes Ray is right.

And he is. The ice box is against part of the house, just in front of the van. She opens it with a grunt and is pleased to see that it’s the one thing running off of a battery and is therefore cold. After she balances the lid against the house, she digs in to the ice and gets several good-sized chunks. Nothing is uniform, but at this point it doesn’t matter. As long as it helps Bob get better, Anette doesn’t care how cold her hands are or how awkward looking the ice is. 

When she gets back, Ray has found an old shirt somewhere and has ripped it up to make bandages. Anette warps the ice in one of these and goes to press it on Bob’s skin. The burn is even bigger. 

“This’ll hurt, but it should help,” she tells him. He just nods and grits his teeth, and when she presses the make-shift cold pack to the burned flesh, he takes a deep and sharp breath. 

“It’s working,” Ray comments, gently pressing his fingers around the wound. “It’s stopped expanding, anyways. I’ve never seen a burn work like this before.”

It takes probably an hour of icing before the wound is completely extinguished, and it leaves them with a puddle of water. Then Ray goes and digs a First Aid kit out of the van. It’s out of gauze, but he grabs the tweezers and says, “This is going to fucking hurt.”

“Just do whatever so it heals faster,” Bob pants. Ray nods, and he starts peeling blackened flesh off of Bob’s arm. 

Anette leaves the room almost immediately. She can’t stand to hear Bob trying to hold back screams. And anyways, she thought she had seen an aloe plant outside. She’d get some for the burns before they wrapped him up. As she walks, she wonders if Mikey, Frank, or Gerard is asleep. She hopes they are, but she doubts it. Personally, Anette feels too scared and hyped up to sleep, even though she knows she’s exhausted. She wishes they could just stop running, just give up, but from what Bob had told her a few years ago, she knew that death was better than being at the mercy of a SCARECROW or Better Living. He wouldn’t tell her exactly what they did, but the look in his eye had meant that it wasn’t worth trying to survive. 

She finds the plant and tears off enough to cover Bob’s wound, then walks back inside. Ray’s almost done there, and in the cloth that held the ice is bits of dead skin. “Last piece,” Ray promises before peeling Bob’s arm clean and revealing the raw flesh beneath it. Bob grips the arm of the chair with his free hand and pants. 

“Fuck that hurt,” he mutters. “Am I good now?” 

“Almost,” Anette says, peeling the plant apart to get at the ointment inside. She daubs it on the wound, then binds it with the cleanest strip of cloth she can find. “There.” 

“I’ll take him from here,” Ray says, and he helps Bob up and walks him out of the kitchen to find a spare room where he can sleep. 

-

Anette is sitting at the table, exhausted. She’s finished cleaning up the kitchen and is slumped in the chair, fighting sleep. Ray comes back into the room, running his hands through his curly hair. 

“Bob’s asleep. So are Frank and Mikey.”

“And Gee?” Anette asks, looking up at him. She can see the dark circles under his eyes, and she guesses she doesn’t look much better, possibly worse because she has lighter skin. 

“Dunno. Go find him though. You need him.” Anette starts, but Ray smiles wearily. “Come on, Anette. We all know you two have a thing.”

“But—”

“Bob’s okay with it, you know. He thinks it’s good for both of you.” 

“Really?”

“Yeah, but if I were you, I would keep the, uh… public affection to a minimum, ‘kay?”

“Got it,” Anette replies, and after she yawns and stands, she walks down the hallway to try and find Gerard. The creaky, wooden floor is covered in dust with lots of scrape marks and footprints in it, and she follows one set all the way down the hall and into the last room on the right. 

The room is pretty bare except for the old bed centered along the right wall and the lump of dusty quilts on it that apparently contains Gerard. Anette can hear his shallow breathing, breaking the dead quiet of the night. She walks as quietly as possible over to him and sits gingerly on the edge of the bed, wincing as the springs creak. She can just see the back of Gerard’s head, his black hair greasy and stringy and messy. Anette reaches out to run her fingers through it. She hopes it won’t wake him up.

The moment she touches his hair, he shoots up out of bed and grabs her shoulders, his fingers digging into her muscles. His eyes are crazy and alert, but have a strange amber tint to them. Maybe it’s the light. “What is it, what’s wrong?” he practically yells, trying to get out from under the quilts while keeping a hold of Anette. 

It takes her a moment to recover her breath, lost from Gerard’s sudden… aggression. But she sets her own hands on his shoulders and starts to gently push him back into the bed. “It’s alright, Gerard. I promise.” Her voice sounds shaky, but she tries to keep it under control. He needs that from her right now. 

When they lock eyes, Gerard’s jaw goes slack and he makes some sort of strangled noise like he can’t find his voice. His eyes are really starting to worry Anette. Do they change color when he’s sleep deprived? They’re still that amber instead of hazel. Finally, he gets some words out. “Was I… was I a-asleep?” 

“Yes,” Anette says. Gerard’s grip is hurting her, and she can feel him shaking through it. Carefully, she sets her hands on his face and rubs her thumbs on his temples, small circles that make him close his eyes and shudder again. “Please go back to sleep. I’m sorry I woke you.”

His eyes open again, feebly. “Mikey? Where’s Mikey?”

Now he’s got that look like a small, scared animal, and Anette’s heart feels like it’s going to break. Lips trembling, she says, “M-Mikey is with Frank. They’re both okay, too. But we might have to leave s-soon, so you should try and sleep, alright?” 

Gerard pulls her closer jerkily, and Anette has to steady herself against the mattress so she doesn’t head-butt him. Their noses are almost touching. “I just… when I close my eyes, I see… I see…”

Anette knows exactly what he means. “Me too. Every time,” she assures him. His eyes are still wild, but he looks more relaxed, possibly. So she decides to leave, to let him sleep in peace.

But when she moves, he grips her even tighter and she has to fight to hold back a wince. “No!” he yells, but it isn’t angry. It’s scared. “Please… don’t. I can’t… I can’t…”

“Can’t what?” Anette prompts.

“I don’t think I can sleep without you.” 

“Alright... I’ll stay.” She leans down and kisses him, some blonde hair falling off her shoulder and tickling his face. Gerard lets go of her and she lies next to him, letting him practically crush her against himself and bury his nose in her hair. But Anette’s alright with whatever he wants to do, as long as he’ll just sleep.

-

Ray stays up all night this time. He doesn’t want to bother Anette and Gerard on the off-chance Gerard _might_ be sleeping, but he does check up on Mikey and Frank in the other bedroom. They’re both asleep, but Mikey’s hand in just inches from the nightstand and his knife, open and ready to use. Frank isn’t frowning in his sleep, which is a good thing. So Ray leaves them to check on Bob. 

Ray did the best he could with Bob, considering there were no more bedrooms. He found a stash of blankets in a cabinet that smelled like mold, but they would have to do. He made Bob a bed of them on the decrepit couch and the moment Bob had closed his eyes, he was out. Ray had stayed for a moment, running his fingers through Bob’s too-blonde hair, and then left. The image of Bob’s ravaged arm was stinging Ray’s heart.

But Ray can find neither sleep nor a place _to_ sleep. Instead, he explores the house, turning up an old radio. After digging in the van for maybe half an hour, he returns triumphant with batteries and gets the radio working. He lingers on a news channel for a while, hoping not to hear anything. Sports, weather… news of the gas station exploding. But all of it is recorded, not live. And that’s fine, considering it’s three in the morning by this point. As a bonus, the station said that they had no idea what was going on or why the explosion occurred. Good. So BL didn’t want the public involved in the man-hunt just yet. 

Satisfied, Ray changes the channel, and keeps channel surfing for almost an hour. He goes from Mexican soaps (he stays here for almost half an hour because he can kind of figure out what they’re saying and it’s such a sweet escape) to a channel dedicated to advertising BL products (like they need it) to something in… Russian, maybe? It sounded strange. 

Until finally, Ray comes upon a music channel, the only one he’s been able to get since they really left the city. “This is 109 coming to you live for the early birds. Doctor Death-Defying is back, rock stars, and we are bringing you this song straight from the desert.”

Ray is intrigued, and stays on the channel until sunrise. He sits there and watches the sky outside, letting the music flow gently through the kitchen, music he had never heard before and believed had been outlawed on public radio. It tells stories of life, love, suffering, death, and hope. Hope was what they really needed now.

-

Mikey is the first one up, and he and Ray start making a sort of breakfast at around six-thirty. Soon Frank stumbles in, and then Bob, who looks like hell. He’s pale and shaky and needs more rest, but food first. 

Ray waits until seven to go get Anette and Gerard. He pushes their door open, cringing when it creaks loudly. He sticks his head in to find them on the bed together. Gerard is face-down next to Anette, an arm wrapped around her waist, whereas Anette is on her back, staring at the ceiling. She turns her head to look at Ray and give him a soft smile. “Time to go?” she asks. 

Ray has to unstick his throat to form a reply, but it comes even later when he sees that on Anette’s pale shoulders are purple bruises shaped like fingers. What the fuck did Gerard do to her? “Yes. We’ve got breakfast and then we’ve got to run.”

“Be there in a few,” Anette says, and Ray closes the door, frowning.

-

“Gerard? Gee, time to get up.”

Anette reaches over and runs her free fingers through his hair. Her other hand is currently trapped under his body, on the verge of overheating or losing circulation. 

“Mmm?” Gerard grunts, rolling slightly and opening his eyes. They’re back to their normal, darker hazel. Anette sighs at this. She wouldn’t have known what to do if they were still that odd amber color. 

“Ray says food’s ready and then we have to get going,” Anette says gently, trying to wriggle out from under him. 

“Oka—”

Gerard stops and is gazing at her intensely, shocked. “What?” she asks, confused.

“When… when did you get those?” he asks quietly, but she can tell he is furious.

She has no idea whether to answer truthfully or not. “Last night.”

“ _When_ last night?” 

“When you… when you woke up.” 

Now it’s Gerard’s turn to be confused. “I woke up?” 

“You don’t remember it?” 

“No. Did _I_ do that to you?” He’s panicking now.

“It’s fine, Gee, it doesn’t hurt.”

“What the _fuck,_ Anette, what did I do?” 

“I mean, I accidently woke you and you freaked out and grabbed me—”

“Shit—”

“—but it was just because you were scared.”

“That’s no fucking excuse. God, Anette, I could have really hurt you—”

“You weren’t yourself,” she says firmly. She hopes he won’t keep arguing – she isn’t sure how he would react to his eyes changing color. And if he didn’t remember waking up even… 

That electric feeling of Gerard’s lips on her shoulder interrupts her thoughts. He kisses her bruises like each one could make it better, make them a little lighter. “Anette, I… you don’t hate me?”

“Of course not.” This is silly to her, absolutely preposterous. “Gerard, I could never hate you.”

“Are you—”

Anette cuts him off with a kiss, one that catches him off guard, steals his breath away, makes him moan. One of her hands softly rubs against his jaw and he tangles his fingers in her hair, not caring that it hasn’t been washed because it still smells like her. Gerard is kissing her hungrily, wanting more and more, pressing their bodies together and trying to hide her away from the world. His tongue slides into her mouth and she just tastes warm and comforting, if those have tastes. 

“Mm… mm, Gee,” Anette says, her lips brushing against his as she tries to open her eyes. 

“Shh,” he mumbles before going back for more, never wanting to stop. One of his hands leaves her hair and goes to her waist, tracing along the fabric of her tank top and sliding underneath, fingertips ghosting along her skin. She shivers in the kiss and gasps as Gerard starts to gently suck on her neck just below her jawbone. 

“Gee, n-not here,” she manages to gasp out, pushing on him. 

“Why not?” he asks, trying to kiss her neck again. 

“We have to go,” Anette insists, and she rolls away from him and out of the bed. “Come on. Let’s drive.”

He scrambles out of the bed and catches her just before she’s about to leave. It’s gentle, though, and he pulls her in close. “Only if I get to have you. One night. Before it’s too late.”

Instead of just shaking her head, she kisses him again, then leads the way out the door.


	4. Outlaws

Ray’s having a tough time focusing on the driving. The benefit is that he’s not driving into the rising sun, but his nerves are on edge with Bob’s groans from the back seat. He doesn’t sound too good. 

“Mikey, you wanna keep some ice on him?”

“Yeah.”

There’s a rustling as Mikey pulls out the bag of ice they stocked up on before they left and presses it to Bob’s wound. Bob sighs a little, and maybe, just maybe, it’s one less thing Ray has to worry about. 

He’s also a little distracted by Anette, who’s sitting up front with him. She keeps running her hands over her skin, like she’s nervous or something. Ray glances into the rearview mirror. Gerard and Frank are asleep in the back; Mikey has put his headphones back in; Bob is laying with his head in Mikey’s lap, eyes closed, probably in too much pain to pay attention. 

So Ray asks her, “You okay, Annie?”

The bruises on her shoulders are purple, she has a new red mark on her neck, and she’s biting her lip slightly. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You look like you got the crap beat out of you.” If Bob had seen her like this, Ray was pretty sure he would murder someone. 

“I… oh goodness, do I?” She pulls down the visor to check her reflection. “Wow. I do, kinda. The dark circles don’t help much, do they?”

“Not really.” He can see her trying to fix her hair out of the corner of his eye. “Anette, what happened?”

She glances back at the others in the van before answering. “I uh… when I woke Gerard up last night, I think he was delusional. He… grabbed me. It’s fine, though,” she adds quickly when Ray shots her a look. “He’s fine now.”

“And, uh… your neck?”

Anette turns red and adverts her eyes to the hole in her jeans. 

“Oh.” Ray knows what that means. He keeps his eyes on the road now, not wanting to embarrass her further. He knows how Gerard can be.   
“Hey, do you want some music in?” she asks, trying to break their awkward silence. 

“Yeah, actually, you wanna find this radio station for me?”

“What is it?”

“109 point… something, I don’t remember.”

“Okay.” Anette reaches over and starts turning the radio dial, looking for the station. 

“Wait! That was it.”

She backs up the dial a few notches and the station comes through, the same voice Ray had listened to all last night. 

“109 in the sky, but the pigs won’t quit. You’re here with me, Doctor Death-Defying—”

Anette giggles and Ray smiles. 

“—your helicopter, pumping out the slaughtermatic sounds to keep you alive…”

-

Anette drives when Ray gets too tired. She’s the only one awake after their quick lunch stop to get water and some clean rags for Bob. She doesn’t have the heart to change the station, but she does turn it down a little so that maybe Frank doesn’t wake up. He had tried to stay awake for almost half an hour after they got on the road, probably to keep Anette entertained, but he’s drifted off now and Anette doesn’t see the point in waking him up again. They’ve all had sleep, but it’s been fitful and crappy and no one’s really _well rested._ Anette’s fighting the urge to sleep herself, but she’s the only one who’s anything close to awake. 

She has alone time to think, at least. It’s hard for her not to panic herself. First she thinks about her and Bob’s house, and then Mikey and Gerard’s, wondering what the reaction to the dead bodies was. Then she is reliving the night in the alley in her mind, and for some reason starts imagining what would happen if they got caught. She was sure they’d fight, but she doesn’t think she could handle another case of being shot at. If Bob was in this much pain, what if… no. She couldn’t think like that. No one was going to die. 

-

“We need to stop for the night. In a hotel.”

Anette has made up her mind. They need _real_ beds tonight. 

“Anette, are you crazy?” Mikey asks. “We can’t do that. They’re looking for us.”

“Look, we’re far enough away from the city. We’ve been driving for two days straight. I’m actually surprised we haven’t seen the boarder yet.” Anette pauses while they all look at her. No one looks thrilled about the idea. “And besides… we’re all so exhausted. And Bob needs actual rest. If we get a hotel room, we can all get cleaned up and get some real sleep.” 

Anette can sense the guys don’t want to admit she’s right, but one look at Bob makes them agree with her. He isn’t quite as pale as this morning, but he still looks pretty terrible. Not to mention they all have dark circles under their eyes and have cramped muscles from being scrunched into the van for so long. 

Ray is the one who sighs first. “Alright, we’ll… we’ll go another hour or so. I think there’s a town not too far ahead, and we’ll get something that we can pay for in cash. Anette, you and Bob can just get the room, ask for double queens or something…”

His voice drifts away and everyone else just nods. They’re either too tired or lost in thought to care. Probably a combination of both. 

-

It’s Anette and Bob that walk into the motel’s front lobby to rent a room that night when they decide to stop at around nine. The sun is almost completely set, and they have literally no idea where they are, other than in California. All they know is that they’re far enough away from Battery City that their faces aren’t plastered all over the news stations. 

The guy behind the counter is a grease ball, but Anette can use that to her advantage. He wouldn’t turn down a girl like her, even if she did look pretty raggedy. 

“Can we get a room for the night? Double queen, please.”

“Got one. Smoking.” 

“We’ll take it,” Anette says, pulling out her wallet. “How much?”

He is eyeing her up, and then stops at her face. Then his gaze slowly shifts to Bob, and he looks like he might recognize them. Damn. Anette isn’t sure what she’ll do if this guy recognizes them. 

Finally, he gives his head a shake. “Eighty-nine even.”

Anette counts out the bills and hands them to him in exchange for the key. “Thank you.”

“Yeah. One thirteen on the other side.”

Bob ushers her out before anything else can be said. They hand the keys over to Mikey and Gerard before moving the van over. Anette notices a general store across the street. “Bob, I’m going over to the store. Be back in about twenty minutes.” 

“I’ll go with you,” Gerard says, and he walks beside her as they make it to the light and cross the street. The town is dead for it being this relatively early in the evening. “You okay, Anette?”

Anette frowns as they make it to the doors. “Yeah, why?”

“I mean… you drove all day, and then… last night…” Gerard visibly gulps and his eyes flick down to the bruises on her shoulders. 

“I’m okay, Gerard.” She takes his hand and gives it a brief squeeze before picking up a shopping basket. “I promise.”

“Ah-ah-ah-all right,” he yawns wildly, and she tugs him through the store. They get a little more food, some medical supplies for Bob, and then Anette grabs a bottle each of shampoo and conditioner. Gerard raises his eyebrows at the bottles. 

“We all smell,” is all she says, and carries on. Gerard’s eyes dart all around as Anette finishes up the shopping, looking for signs of trouble. Granted, he’s so tired that he won’t put up much of a fight when compared to a Draculoid, but he likes to think that he could give Anette enough time to get away and warn the others if something happened…

Before he knows it, Anette is paying and they are each carrying two bags on the way back to the room. They walk very close together, shoulders bumping occasionally, but Gerard has to make sure that they get back safe. Not having a lazar gun on him makes him extra nervous. 

“Let me get the door,” he says when they get to the room, and he swipes the card and shoulders the door open. Anette passes by him, brushing him just enough that his heart leaps into his throat for a moment, and then Gerard takes another look around before shutting the door and dead-bolting it behind him. 

-

Gerard takes a shower last. He wasn’t originally going to take one, but Mikey glared at him when he tried to wriggle out of it, and so he gave in. But now, he’s happy he has showered, mostly because he feels like a human being again. He gets out of the hot shower and dresses in his last set of clean clothes. 

Anette is folding some laundry on the bed closest to him. Neat little piles of everyone’s clothes cover the bed, and she sends him a small smile when he passes by. Gerard returns it, adverting his eyes before he stares too long and loses his train of thought. Bob is lying down in the other bed, and Ray is sitting next to him, absent-mindedly running his hands through Bob’s hair while himself, Frank, and Mikey watch the news. The lady on the TV is simply reporting about the weather tomorrow, which is a good thing. They don’t need to be watching anything else about how they’re armed and dangerous. 

“Anything new?” Gerard asks, taking a seat on the floor next to Mikey. 

“It’s gonna be hotter than hell tomorrow,” Frank replies, taking his eyes off the TV for a moment to look at Gerard. “And a couple of people were shot at around four trying to cross the boarder up north.”

“What about the explosion? Anything on that?”

“Just a follow up story saying they didn’t know who had caused it or where they had gone,” Ray says. “It wasn’t much.”

“Good.” Gerard doesn’t know how they would get anywhere if they were being hunted by more than Korse. 

They’re silent for almost a half hour while they watch the news and Anette finishes packing everything up. When she’s done, she sits down on the bed behind Gerard and starts playing with his hair. Gerard closes his eyes and leans his head back, half-listening to the newscaster now. All he wants to feel in this moment are Anette’s hands in his hair, how she’s twirling strands of hair between her fingers and massaging his scalp gently. 

Before he knows it, the news is over and they’re all shifting around trying to decide who’s going to sleep where. 

“Bob needs a bed,” Ray says first, and no one argues, partially because Bob is already asleep and they don’t want to move him. 

“Okay, so you get that bed. So… who’s sleeping on the floor… ?” Frank asks, looking at Mikey, Gerard and Anette meekly. 

Mikey sighs. “I’ll take the floor if we get the comforters and extra pillows. That should be okay.”

“No, Mikey, I’ll—” Anette starts, but she gets cut off by him. 

“Anette, you drove all day. You and Gerard take the other bed. We’ll be fine, we got a bed last night.” 

Anette sighs, but she doesn’t argue any more. She goes off to the bathroom while Frank and Mikey make their bed in the space between the foot of the beds and the TV dresser stand. Ray kicks off his shoes and crawls in under the covers next to Bob. Frank and Mikey get settled in, and when Anette is done, it’s lights off and Gerard is holding Anette in his arms under the sheets of a crappy motel bed. 

About an hour passes and Gerard can’t fall asleep. He can hear everyone else’s deep breathing and wishes he could just be out like they were. But then again, he did have issues sleeping, so this wasn’t that surprising. 

Anette rolls over, but her eyes are open. “Gee,” she whispers so quietly Gerard leans in a little to hear her better. “Gee, I can’t sleep.”

Her voice sounds cracked, upset. “I can’t either.” He reaches out and touches her cheek. It’s wet. “What’s wrong?”

“I just… I keep thinking…” She sniffles. “What’s going to happen to us, Gerard?”

Gerard pauses before answering her. “We’re going to make it, Anette. That I promise you.”

“Yeah?” she asks.

“Yeah.” Gerard presses his lips to her forehead. “We’re going to be fine. We’ll all make it out, out of this fucking state, and we’ll be free.” 

“Where will we live?”

“How does way the fuck out in the middle of nowhere sound?”

“Good,” she agrees.

“And you can sing for the radio and I’ll draw comics or some shit, and the guys can have a band like they want, and maybe Bob can be a pilot, too, just for kicks.”

Anette thinks that Bob would love that. She smiles a little and snuggles into Gerard more. “What else?”

“They will never, ever take us alive. I promise you,” Gerard whispers in her ear, and her scent tickles his nose in a way that just makes him melt all over. 

Anette doesn’t respond verbally, but she does clench at his shirt a little, and they fall into a semi-easy sleep.

-

It’s the smashing of glass just outside their window that startles Frank awake. He lays there for a few moments, his heart pounding in his chest, his eyes taking a few seconds to adjust to the darkness of the hotel room. 

“Mikey?” he whispers into the darkness. No one answers him. Frank squirms around so he can see the window above him. He can see a dark shadow there, trying to look in. His heart starts pounding even harder. “Mikey, wake up,” he now hisses, prodding the skinny man next to him with his finger.

“Mm, what?” Mikey mutters groggily, turning over so he’s facing Frank.

“There’s someone looking in the window.” 

Mikey’s eyes snap open and he’s instantly alert. He too turns and sees the figure in the window, which is starting to move on. “Shit. I bet that’s a Draculoid,” he breathes. 

“What do we do?” Frank asks, biting his lip. 

“Get everyone up. Quietly. Keep the lights off,” Mikey instructs, slowly getting to his feet. He goes for Gerard, so Frank pulls himself up and starts nudging Ray. 

“Ray, get up. We have to go now.” Ray doesn’t respond. “Ray!” Frank hisses in his ear. “Dammit Ray, get up.”

“Urgh, wha?” Ray’s eyes slowly open. “What’s up, Frank?” 

“We have to go.”

By the time everyone is awake, they’re all on edge and talking in hushed voices. The footsteps in the hallway have set them on full alert, and Gerard and Ray are working on barricading the door while Frank keeps watch from the crack in the curtains. 

“I see someone down by the van,” he reports. “But it looks like it’s just one. Maybe the others are inside looking for us.”

“So we can take him, yeah?” Mikey asks, trying to see out as well. 

“I think so, if we can get out the window.”

Heavy, urgent footsteps approach their door. “Make a decision fast,” Gerard says, heaving the armchair onto the dresser. 

Mikey pulls out his lazar gun. “Now or never.”

“Let’s do it then,” Anette agrees, and she secures the bag on her shoulder. 

In a fluid motion, Mikey yanks open the window and aims his gun at the shadow by their van. He fires, takes him down, and makes a considerable hole in the screen. He rips through it and is the first to scramble out the window, followed closely by Frank. Mikey starts clearing the area while Bob and Anette throw bags out and then follow them, making for the van. 

It only takes a few seconds before Ray and Gerard leave too, scrambling as fast as they can. “Shit, they’ve fucking found us, _shit,_ ” Gerard says as he runs for the van, the sound of several people crashing into the room they had left just moments before. They’re halfway to the van when the first Draculoid throws himself through the window, lazar gun drawn and ready for the kill. 

“Gee, duck!” Mikey yells, and Gerard gets out of the way in time for Mikey to shoot down two Draculoids, killing one as he tries to get through the window and blocking that exit. “Let’s go!” he yells to Ray, who’s already behind the wheel. Gerard and Mikey throw themselves inside and Ray takes off, tires squealing as they tear out of the parking lot and onto the road. As they pass by the entrance, they see Korse standing there, flanked by Draculoids, and everyone in the van ducks as they open fire. One lazar bolt shatters the back window and melts the driver-side headrest, but no more land as the van pulls out of range and rushes down the highway.

-

“We’ve lost them again.”

Korse holds the walkie talkie in his hand, his white lazar gun in his other, waiting for a response. He sits on a ripped bed in the disorderly hotel room. 

The talkie buzzes. “This is your last chance. Take them out, or leave yourself in the desert.”

Korse’s grip tightened on the gun. “Understood.” SCARECROW didn’t respond. Korse dropped the radio and shot the mirror in front of him, shattering it and scorching the wall. 

This time, they wouldn’t get away.

-

“Three in the morning. Three in the _fucking_ morning.”

They’ve been driving for a while now. Frank is still grumbling over being awoken in the wee hours of the morning by government mercenaries, Ray is still feeling the back of his head occasionally to make sure his hair is still there while he drives, Mikey and Bob are perched in the back, each with a lazar gun, and Gerard and Anette are in the middle, Anette snoozing and Gerard staring out the window, watching for the sun to start emerging. It was getting lighter, but it wasn’t quite sunrise yet. 

“We’re alive though, and that’s all that really matters,” Ray says wearily, checking the gauges in the dash. “But we’re gonna need gas soon. Like, real soon.”

“Jesus, we just fueled up!” Frank exclaims. 

“Yeah, well, this van gets shitty gas mileage,” Ray explains, starting to get irritated. 

“Why the fuck haven’t we stolen something else then?”

“Because we wouldn’t fit in anything else, you dumbass.”

“Don’t call me a dumbass, you—”

“Guys, stop,” Gerard says sharply, and Ray and Frank both shut up. “We’re all stressed and freaked out, but we can’t be fighting like this. Yeah, the van kind of sucks, but it’s been fine so far. We’re okay on money, so we’ll be fine until we can find a more permanent solution.”

After that, there isn’t any more bickering. They all have a peanut butter sandwich, quietly listening to the radio. An almost electronic voice and softly upbeat melody wash over them like the rising sun paints the desert sand vivid coppers and golds as they drive on and on, hoping for a reprieve soon. 

“ _Can I be the only hope for you? Because you’re the only hope for me. And if we can find where we belong…_ ”

-

“We interrupt this program to bring you an urgent radio announcement.”

“Uh-oh.” Frank cranks the volume on the radio and everyone sits very still, listening to what the radio had to say. 

“There are criminals reported to be roaming the western California desert. They are wanted by the state for terrorism and murder. They are five men and one woman, all between the ages of twenty and thirty, traveling in a grey van with the license plate XTC-347. If you see them, report to the police. Do not approach them. They are armed and dangerous.”

They all sit in a numb silence when Frank switches the radio off. 

This was it. 

There was no escaping now.


	5. Middle of Fucking Nowhere, California

The van rolls to a stop in The Middle of Fucking Nowhere, California at around eight thirty. It’s starting to get hot even now this early, but that’s not the real problem. 

“We’re fucked,” Frank groans as the engine sputters. “So, so fucked.”

“Well, let’s get going,” Mikey says, starting to throw canned food in a bag. “We need to find shelter before it’s too hot.” 

“What?” Frank asks, a little dumbfound.

“We’re walking,” Bob grunts, throwing Frank his bag. “Start packing.” 

Everyone packs up what can be salvaged from the van. They distribute the water bottles evenly, and then get ready to start walking. 

“Which way, Mikes?” Gerard asks, looking at the map Mikey is holding. 

“It looks like there might have been a town out east of the highway,” Mikey replies, slipping on his sunglasses so he can see better. “So I guess east it is.”

They start walking, Mikey leading, Gerard and Anette next, and then Bob, Ray and Frank all together. As they leave, Ray pats the hood of the van. “Sorry,” he says, and then they’re off into the desert. 

-

“Gee, can I have the water?” 

Gerard looks down at the water bottle he’s holding, the one he and Anette have been passing back and forth. It’s only been an hour and a half and there’s only a good mouthful left in this one. 

“Yeah, finish it,” he says, passing it to her. She doesn’t even protest, just drinks the water, making sure not to waste a drop.

“Thanks,” she says, stowing the empty bottle in her bag. “We’ll refill it when we find this town.”

Gerard smiled at her optimism. “Yeah. Hey Mikey, how much further?”

“Dunno, it’s difficult to judge how far we’ve gone,” Mikey says from the front of the line. “My guess… maybe five more miles?”

“Right.” Gerard hopes that Mikey is right. If they keep this up, they’ll all be dead of heatstroke by tomorrow.

-

By eleven, they’ve stripped off several layers. Anette is in a tank-top and shorts, her shoulders starting to get burned. Frank, Ray and Bob have all shed their shirts, and even Mikey changed into shorts at one point. They are all panting, desperate to find this maybe town that is starting to look like it didn’t actually exist. 

“Guys, we have to find shade soon,” Ray says, his voice wheezy. 

“Yeah, look, we’ll head for that outcropping,” Mikey assures him, pointing ahead to a rock formation. They trudge on, hoping to get there as fast as possible. 

When they do, and they’ve checked thoroughly for snakes, they all collapse in the shade. 

“Who’s got the knife?” Bob asks, pulling out some cans of pasta. Their last ones. “We’ll have to split it.”

Mikey mutilates the cans, but they’re opened and consumed by the six starving refugees in no time. They all finish off another two bottles of water, and then they lay there, napping and wondering what was next. 

Mikey takes his time studying the map again, wishing it was… less tourist-y. All he knows is that they had walked east and were somewhere, lost, in the middle of the desert. 

“Hey, what’s that?” Anette asks, pointing to the horizon. A dust cloud is traveling there. 

“Let’s look,” Gerard says before anyone has a chance to really think, and the two of them exit the little cave and take up scout on top of the rock. “Guys, it’s a car. But not like, a Draculoid vehicle, but like a beat to shit thing that’s going… somewhere.” 

With that, everyone else scrambles out to see what he’s talking about. In the distance, they do see a car driving some dirt road, and they all kind of sigh in relief. 

“Let’s follow it. It’s going in the right direction,” Mikey suggests, and so they pack up. 

-

They follow the car, or rather, it’s dust trail, for another twenty minutes before they can see the remains of a pit stop rising out of the sand. It’s only a small handful of buildings, but it’s so remote that they’re sure no one (besides the driver of the car) will be there. They all pick up the pace, and in no time, they’re creeping on the outskirts. 

“Okay, so it looks like there’s a diner, a gas station, and some kind of mechanic building,” Mikey whispers, pulling his lazar gun out. They’re all crouched behind a makeshift fence made of some rusting roving. “Let’s split up and search it. Whoever was driving that car has to be here. I’ll go with Frank and Gerard, and Bob, you take Anette and Ray. Meet back here in twenty, okay?”

Everyone nods to the plan and they split up, Bob leading Anette and Ray to go search the diner, while Mikey, Frank and Gerard take the gas station. They crouch low when they approach the front door, which is actually closed. Most of the windows are boarded up, but they can hear a muffled voice inside. 

The three of them exchange nods before Frank unleashes a rather powerful kick and throws open the door. 

“I was wondering when you kids were gonna show up.”

Mikey freezes in the doorway, his lazar gun pointed at the man in front of him. But it’s not the furnishing of the room, or the appearance of the man, or even the fact that he’s pointing a gun right back at them that makes Mikey stop. It’s the man’s voice. 

It’s Doctor Death Defying. 

-

“Go ahead and put the gun down, pretty boy. I’m not gonna shoot you if you don’t try and shoot me,” Death Defying says, lowering his own gun. Instinctively, Mikey lowers his. 

“You’re… you’re the guy on the radio!” Frank blurts out. Gerard is standing there, just as stunned as Mikey. “How did you…?”

“I saw you following my car. I figured you were headed this way. Show Pony should have found your friends right about—”

The back door bursts open and Bob, Ray and Anette are ushered inside, escorted by a male wearing roller skates, tights, and a cut off shirt. A helmet hides his face. 

“Yeup. Well, now that we’re all together, you kids want food?” Death Defying offers. 

“Food?” Ray asks, confused. 

“Food. And then you can tell me why SCARECROW is after you.”

Everyone exchanges glances. They’re not sure if they can trust Death Defying and his friend or not, but really, they don’t have much of a choice. 

“Sure,” Gerard says, and they all start rummaging around for food in the nearly-abandoned gas station. 

-

“So, they’re hunting you because you saw them kill someone, and then tried to silence you,” Death Defying sums up, watching the six of them eat food almost ravenously. They’ve moved to the diner where they can all sit down and eat, except for Show Pony, who has disappeared again. “Sounds pretty typical.”

“Typical?” Anette asks. 

“We don’t live in the middle of the desert for nothing,” he replied, taking a drink of coffee. “If you keep your heads down, we might let you camp out here for a while.”

“Really? You’ll do that for us?” 

“Why not. We’ve got the same enemy, and hey, the more the merrier. You can have the house out behind the gas station. It’s empty, but it should still work for the most part.”

Gerard swallows his food. “Thanks. We appreciate it.”

Death Defying stands up. “No problem. I’ve got a radio show to start,” he says, and walks out the back towards the gas station.

Everyone continues eating in silence. They don’t say it, but everyone can sense the relief in the air. No more running. At least, not for a while. For now, they were safe. 

-

The next morning, Gerard, Mikey and Bob make a trip to the nearest town in the graffitied Trans-AM. They come back with food, two other lazar guns, and bottles of hair bleach and dye. In their absence, Anette, Frank and Ray scowered the house, setting it up in a somewhat pleasant manner. The two bedrooms upstairs have been furnished with enough sleeping space for the six of them, and the kitchen and sitting room downstairs have been turned into a sort of base of operations. And in the attic, Frank makes a sort of exciting find. 

“Guys, look at these!” He holds up an old red racing jacket, dusty, but seeming to be in good shape. “They’re so cool! And there’s six of them.”

Ray goes for the first jacket on top of the pile, a black one with an American flag under a giant black widow printed on the back. “Damn Frank, and these were in the attic?”

“Yeah, there’s a whole bunch of shit up there, like helmets and crap like that,” Frank answers, distracted by the green vest he’s now trying on. “Fuck, this one is perfect. It’s so mine.” 

“Yours? You’re going to take them?” Anette asks, poking through the pile. They all seem to be men’s sizes. 

“Why not? They’re just lying about in this dusty old house. It’s not like we’re actually stealing or anything.” 

Anette sighs. “Yeah, I guess.” 

“Dude, we should like, make up new identities. Since we’re outlaws now,” Frank jokes to Ray, who has pulled on the coat and zipping it up. “You know. Because then we can like, be super undercover.”

Ray laughs. “Frank, you’re such a dork. But I guess so. These jackets are pretty sweet, anyways.”

-

“They’ve been spotted.”

Korse grabs his walkie talkie a little too hard. 

“Where?”

“About twenty miles north west of here. It’s near to where we think the radio transmissions come from.”

Korse laughs. “Excellent. Pack up, we’re going hunting.”


	6. Killjoys

“How’s it look?”

Gerard is standing in the doorway of the smaller bedroom. He’s shirtless, his gray jeans zipped but unbuttoned, his newly dyed hair still dripping cold water onto his shoulders. Anette looks up from her book and tilts her head to the side. 

“It’s very… red.”

“I hope so,” he chuckles, ruffling his hair and glancing at it in the mirror. It’s a very vivid red now, so much so that it could be mistaken for some shade of pink in the right lighting. “I mean, that was the point. Mikey is bleaching his right now.” Anette marks her place in the book and sets it on the bedside table before standing up. “I guess my real question is do you like it?”

“I… yeah.”

Gerard snorts. “That didn’t sound very convincing.”

“No, I like it,” Anette says hastily. She’s standing in front of him now, her eyes inspecting his hair. “Why does it matter anyways? It’s your hair.”

“Because your opinion matters to me,” Gerard answers, raising his eyebrows. 

“It’s just…” Anette reaches out and plays with a lock of his hair. “I mean, it looks good. It really does. But…”

“But what?”

“It’s really bright. Don’t you think it’ll draw a lot of attention to yourself?” she asks hesitantly, withdrawing her hand. 

“Well, at the very least, it’s a different color. It’ll throw them off long enough for me to shoot them,” Gerard says with a smile. “Jokes aside though, don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

He leans towards Anette and kisses her. She responds by wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him towards her until their chests are touching. “I just… I worry about everyone,” she says quietly when the kiss is broken. “I don’t want to lose any of you.”

“We all feel that way. And we’ll be fine. We just gotta be careful and not do anything stupid.” 

“Yeah, but—”

“Shh.” Gerard silences her with another kiss. “Don’t think about it. Just think about now and how you and I are in this room together and the door locks from the inside.”

A shiver runs down Anette’s spine. “Does it?”

Gerard reaches back, shuts the door, and locks it. “Just you and me.”

Anette starts walking backwards back towards the bed they’ve been sharing and Gerard is pulled along for the ride. “But Mikey’s still up here,” Anette points out when they stopped, her legs touching the edge of the bed. 

“Eh, it’s not like I haven’t heard him and Frank fucking before,” Gerard shrugs. “And besides, I have to find that third sensitive spot, right?” He kisses her neck where he knows she’ll just melt, and she does, moaning his name. “And the second one is… here.” His hand slips up her tank top and traces along her spine, making her arch into him. “But there’s a third, right?” 

“Mm, maybe,” she responds, breathless. She wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him. “Good luck.”

He smirks and continues running his fingers up and down her spine, making her shiver. “Thanks. Let’s get to it, shall we?”

-

“No. Absolutely not.”

“This is total bullshit, Bob. Why can’t I come with you?”

“Because.”

“Because why? That’s such a stupid answer.”

“Because you’re my little sister, and I’m not letting anything bad happen to you!” His voice is actually raising, something that doesn’t happen very often. “Okay? I promised mom and dad that I would look after you.”

“They’re dead, Bob!”

“So I’m the only one left—”

“I can take care of myself—”

“No is no, Anette. You’re staying here.” Bob yanks his racing jacket on with force, turning his back on her. “Please just stay here.” 

“This is fucking ridiculous,” Anette huffs, throwing herself down in the old armchair, causing a sizable cloud of dust to rise around her. 

“Anette, if you got hurt, I could never forgive myself.”

“I’m not a kid anymore.”

“I know.”

With that, he pockets the lazar gun and walks outside and into the burning sunlight.

-

Lying in wait is one of the hardest things for Korse to do. 

He wants action. He wants to jump out, guns blazing, and take these kids out. He wants to do his job and get out. 

Patience. Patience is the key. He must wait until precisely the right moment to strike, otherwise this hunt will have been pointless. 

There they are. At the grocery store, like complete idiots. Just because they had cut their hair and found some shitty old clothes to wear didn’t make them invisible. Korse’s hand twitched by his side, aching to pull his gun. 

Patience.

“On my go,” Korse mumbles into the walkie talkie in his other hand, keeping it close to his body so he might muffle some of the static. 

Korse frowns as he watches them. The female isn’t there. SCARECROW wasn’t going to be too happy about that. 

_Swoosh-fiiiiiizzzzzzzzzzz._

Korse jumps at the bolt fired from the lazar gun. That’s it. Their cover is blown. 

They’ve started to run back to their car, shouldering two small bags of food. The tallest one pulls out his own lazar gun and Korse quickly takes cover again as two of his men fall around him. The others have hesitated. 

“Get them!” Korse screams, his voice raw and harsh. He jumps up again and starts firing as he runs after them, throwing his body into high gear. There are bolts from lazar guns flying all round him, but he disregards them. He takes aim as he run, trying to keep his arm as steady as possible—

The first and second bolts miss, but the third hits it’s target. The blonde one goes down, but two of the others grab him by the armpits and drag him the remainder of the journey to their car. Korse is forced to take cover again when the tall one fires again, purposefully trying to kill him. 

By the time Korse rolls out from behind the wall, the tires are squealing and he hears a thud as they run over one of his Draculoids on the way out. Korse throws down his gun into the dirt, screaming so loud it drowns out all other sounds around him. 

He will find him. 

And he will burn them. 

-

Anette has been standing watch at the front door for the past half hour. 

The sun has started to set. It’s a much better sight here than in the city. The sky is painted burnt orange and deep purple, gold and scarlet. In the navy above her head, Anette can see the stars beginning to shine and twinkle. A breeze catches and blows through her hair, soothing her skin from the blistering sun. The sand is shadowed, and it’s hard to see shapes in the distance. 

They still aren’t back.

They should have been back two hours ago.

At first, Anette was accepting their lateness as getting lost. That was totally acceptable, as she had no idea where she was. But then she remembered that they had gone into town earlier in the week and this was now inexcusable. Since then, she paced the kitchen and stared out the door, eyes on the hunt for any sign of a dust cloud—

A dust cloud like that one in the distance. 

Anette’s heart leaps into her throat. She grips the rough wooden doorframe tightly, coarseness threatening to slice into her soft hands. She’s shaking all over, but her eyes never leave the growing cloud approaching her. She wonders for a split second if it’s not them, if it’s someone else. But that’s ridiculous. No one else knows this is out here. 

And it’s alright, because she can finally see that it’s the white front of the van, though it’s really sort of brown right now because of all the dust and sand and whatever else has clung to the surface. 

It doesn’t take Anette all that long to figure out something’s wrong.

One of the headlights is out. That’s the first clue. It’s been shot at and shattered, the right one has. There are scorch marks all along the van. They’re driving much, much faster than normal, even for the past two weeks. As they pull in, Anette can see that Gerard is driving, with Mikey in the passenger seat. They both look frantic. 

Anette is running out the door, not caring if she’s barefoot and the rocks are jabbing her painfully. The van screeches to a halt and the door is flung open and Anette is practically screaming, “What happened?”

“Get him inside!” Mikey yells from the other side of the van, running around to where Anette is. Ray has jumped out and is blocking her view, but what he pulls from the van completely stops the world for her. 

Ray is holding up Bob by the armpits, Frank at his knees, and he’s got a great burn in his side. They run past Anette, and Mikey leaps ahead of them, yanking the door open. Gerard shuts up the van and takes Anette’s hand, but she isn’t moving. She’s completely rooted to the spot, eyes fixed on the now empty doorway. 

“Anette, come on. We need to help out.”

She follows him only when he tugs on her hand, eyes empty and her heart pounding and her mind screaming. 

They’ve set Bob on the couch and pulled his shirt off, exposing the burning hole. Blackened skin is flaking off and raw flesh is beginning to cook, making for a putrid smell. Anette’s lips and hands are shaking as she kneels down next to him, running a hand over his forehead and brushing blonde hair out of his face. 

“Gerard, what…?” is all she can manage to say before she feels tears leaking out of her eyes and tracing down her face. 

“We… we were just getting some supplies in the town. And we were leaving, when their cars just… just surrounded us. Korse, he… we thought we had gotten away, and he blasted a hole through the van.” 

Anette’s hand grips the arm of the couch. “I should have been there. I could have saved him, I… he wouldn’t let me go. And now he’s _dying_ , Gerard, he’s—” She chokes up, and Gerard pulls her up into his arms before she can cry onto Bob’s sweating, deteriorating form.

-

Frank and Mikey finally retire at about eleven. Ray, Gerard, and Anette are in the living room. Anette has taken over Ray’s job of kneeling by Bob, trying to slow and stop the burning wound with a damp cloth that gets dunked in a bucket of ice every now and then. Ray collapsed in the armchair, watching Bob through half-open eyes. And Gerard sits on the floor by the broken coffee table, his sketchbook in his lap but unable to draw anything. 

When Ray finally dozes off, Gerard stands up and puts a hand on Anette’s shoulder. “You should go to bed. I’ll take over.”

She just shrugs his hand off without looking at him. “No. You get rest. I’m fine.”

There’s literally no point in arguing with her anymore. “Alright. If you need anything, wake us up.”

“Uh-huh.”

Gerard lets his hand linger near her shoulder for another moment before walking towards the stairs and another probably sleepless night. 

-

Time either passes very slowly or very quickly. It doesn’t matter either way for Anette. She’s still by her brother’s side, hoping he’ll wake up, thinking that maybe they’ll get lucky and the cold water will be enough, that the burn will go out, and she can save him.

She has to save him.

It’s around three in the morning when Bob’s eyes slowly flutter open, and Anette nearly drops the rag in surprise. His eyes focus, and when he sees her, he manages a weak smile. 

“Bob, Bob, I’m sorry,” Anette says, her voice scratchy from crying and disuse. 

“For what?” he croaks out, wincing in pain. 

“I should have been there, I could have—”

“Shh,” he says, and she quiets. “No. It’s alright, Anette. There’s nothing you can do.”

She sits back a little, grabbing the rag again. “But Bob, if I just—”

“No, Anette.” He pushes her hand away weakly. “Anette, just let go. Let me die.”

The words hit her in the heart like an arrow at close range, going straight through her and pulling her heart out on the way. 

“But—”

“No. I’ve saved you, and now you have to keep the rest of these idiots safe.” He tries to laugh, but it just ends in him panting and straining in pain. “I’m dying, Anette. You have to accept it.”

“You can’t die, Bob.” Anette is crying again and her voice is breaking and hands are shaking and she sounds like the scared little girl who lost her parents so many years ago once again. “You-You’re all I have left. I don’t know what to do without you!”

Bob laughs again, despite the pain. “That’s silly. You’ll do fine. You—” He strains again, the burn growing considerably. “You’ll be great. And you can get them back for me, yeah?”

He grabs her hand, and she squeezes it. “Oh-okay.”

“Good. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

When the light leaves his eyes, she buries her head in his chest and her sobs wake up Ray. He hugs her and cries too, and they stay that way until the first beams of the morning peak through the windows. 

-

They bury Bob on a hill out on the north end of town. The only thing marking the grave is an old telephone pole, where Mikey has carved B.N.B. into it, and the small bundle of flowers that Anette has set there. 

She’s there now, leaning against the pole and looking off into the sunset, thinking about all the events the day had brought her.

There had been a general consensus to take on new identities. As a group, they decided on an old name they used to call Bob – Killjoy. 

So now Desert Harmony leans against an aging wooden pole, and Party Poison approaches her, a purple and turquoise racing jacket in his hand.

“It was Bob’s,” he says, as he settles the jacket around her shoulders. “You should have it.”

“Thanks.”

He kisses her temple, and she allows him to wrap his arms around her waist. 

“What’s next?” she asks, glancing up at his face. She can’t tell much from it, as it’s covered by a yellow carnival mask, and his thin lips are betraying nothing.

“We get those bastards. SCARECROW, Korse, the Draculoids… they’re going to pay.”

Desert Harmony just nods stiffly. She couldn’t agree more. 

They watch the sun for a few more moments before Party Poison says, “Come on, let’s go inside.

“Tomorrow, we fight.”

**END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! This fic has been a while in the making, and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. I don't plan on writing any more, but who knows. Can't make any promises either way. 
> 
> Kudos and comments are always appreciated, and once again, thank you!


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